


Fashionable Lateness Only Extends So Far

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Birthday Sex, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 14:14:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11186817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: Happy birthday, Karkat.





	Fashionable Lateness Only Extends So Far

"Hey," Dave says, nudging Karkat with one elbow, squinting at the pink-orange beginnings of a sunset through the window. He cracks a yawn. Karkat responds by twitching and emitting indignant alien rumble noises, which means he's at least half awake, which is good, because they're going to be late. Dave slides a foot under the blankets so that his cold toes press all lovingly up against Karkat's warm leg. The alien grumbling intensifies. "Karkat," Dave says. "Hey." 

"Fuck off," Karkat mutters directly into the pillow. It should have been incomprehensibly muffled into the fabric, but Dave has heard these two words spoken in exactly this and so many other tones by now that he can recognize them easily. He grins. Karkat rolls over, taking essentially all the blankets with him, whisking them off of Dave's body in one sleepy but probably at least half malicious maneuver. He wiggles his body, cocooning himself in the comforter. Dave sighs. 

"Man, we don't have time for your weird troll burrito shit, right now," he says. Karkat's head disappears into the blankets. Most of it, anyway. His horns and a tuft of his scratchy troll hair are sticking out comically, so Dave reaches one hand over and sinks his fingers into the tangled mess. Karkat makes a protest sound from within his burrito. Dave ignores it, moving his fingertips against Karkat's scalp. "How fucked up is this, though? You see how thoroughly these tables have turned? Next time you whine at me for sleeping in, I'm going to remind you of this moment, Karkat. Endlessly, forever, for all eternity." 

Karkat's head sprouts out of the blanket burrito, teeth bared. "It is still _daylight_ ," he points out, sounding pretty overall awake and coherent. Dave slides his hand out of his hair and flicks one his horns admonishingly. 

"Faker," he says. 

"A bad habit I've siphoned directly from _you_ , so you don't get to say shit." 

"All right, but that means you don't get to be pissy later when we show up late to your own party." 

"I didn't ask for a fucking party!" 

"Jade is gonna give you so much shit, making everyone wait on you like some kind of too cool for you bougie jackass--" 

"I am not _making_ anyone do anything--" 

"And Jane is probably gonna lecture you good about how tacky it is, do you want to disappoint Jane, Karkat?" 

Karkat lets out all the air in his lungs -- or, you know, breath sacs or whatever -- in one audible _whoosh_ , and blinks at him slowly. He looks fucking ridiculous all wrapped up like this, and it takes all of Dave's mental fortitude to keep the semi-serious look on his face while he waits for a response.

"God," Karkat says, finally. His eyebrows squish together in an exaggerated display of aggravation. He takes a deep breath. "Is this just how it's going to be, forever? This annual commemoration of an event I didn't even actually technically experience, because as we've long since established, I never even possessed an egg to wriggle out of in the first place? This imprecise, absurd, almost totally made up crosswalk between the whimsically pernicious human calendar to the superior but sadly extinct Alternian timekeeping apparatus, resulting in an abomination of a date that doesn't even end up falling within the range you humans decided was covered by my fucking sign?"

Dave gives him a second, just to make sure he's really done, and then nods, gravely. "Pretty much, yeah." 

" _Why?_ " 

"You can pretend you aren't into it all you want, it's not exactly a secret you get off on the rest of us celebrating your existence, Karkat." 

"I don't--" 

"No need to deny it, I'm not even kinkshaming, dude, I'm into it too." 

Karkat snorts at this, shakes his head, but Dave can see his lips threatening to twitch up. He knows how to recognize Karkat trying his best to _pretend_ affront in the face of acknowledging any other kind of emotion. "Into celebrating mine, or your own?" Karkat asks, losing the battle between his pretend outrage and his genuine amusement in record time. 

"How about... both," Dave says, and Karkat makes an admonishing clicking sound. 

"Avaricious oinkbeast," he says. 

"Aw, man. I'm blushing. I love you too. If you don't unwrap yourself out of that blanket in the next ten seconds, I'm gonna grab one side of it and dump your ass onto the floor like a fuckin' cartoon." Dave makes a meaningful pushing sort of gesture. Karkat's arms sprout out of the top of the blanket burrito and he wraps them around himself, like that'll help at all. "Ten," Dave starts, injecting the most menacing tone he's capable of into the word. Which isn't very menacing at all, but whatever. "Nine. Eight..." He lunges forward, grabbing a blanket edge. Karkat screeches. 

"You said _ten,_ " he protests, trying in vain to wiggle away from him. "That wasn't ten! That _wasn't ten!_ " Dave swings one leg over the thrashing burrito-cocoon-whatever and pins him down, laughing. He leans forward, so his body is all pressed up against Karkat's -- well, Karkat's plus the few layers of blanket in the way -- and his face is only a few inches away from his, too. Karkat stills, blinking up at him. He looks uncertain. A little hopeful? Whatever it is in is face, seeing it makes something warm tentatively unfurl in Dave's chest. 

"Happy birthday," Dave says, very seriously. "Also, wriggling day. Kickflip in on a flaming meteor day. Whatever." 

"Thanks," Karkat says. 

They sit there blinking into each other's eyes for just long enough that it starts to feel awkward, and then Karkat bares his teeth at him and drives one knee up at him through the blankets. Dave dips his head down and kisses him, teeth and all, and it's gratifying as hell the way Karkat sighs up into his mouth and wraps his arms around him for it. The tension in him drains off and his arms loosen around Dave's shoulders. Karkat tilts his chin up and deepens the kiss, turning it from something lazy and cautiously inquisitive to something with _purpose._ Dave lifts his head, breaking it off with a wet sound that twinges deep in his middle. 

"Oh, no," he says. "No way. I see what you're doing. This way, you can blame me when we walk in like an hour late, make _me_ the focal point of all those disapproving looks and lectures, no fucking way, man." 

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Karkat lies right through his pointy teeth, wiggling his hips in a way that, even through the blankets, makes Dave's face heat right up. Oh no. He's not this easy. Right? Shit, is he? "But as far as I've been able to gather, the whole point of this bullshit pseudo-holiday is to perform acts of service for the unfortunate focus, either in the form of pleasant gestures or actual gifts or both."

"Acts of service," Dave repeats, because he knows an innuendo when he sees one.

Karkat raises his brows. Dave holds his breath. They hold this stalemate for approximately six seconds, and then Dave exhales around a mouthful of self-deprecating laughter, shoulders slumping. He is definitely, absolutely that easy. Fuck. It's not his fault. The thing is, Karkat so rarely _asks_ for this sort of thing, especially anywhere near this directly, and so wouldn't wasting an opportunity just be -- well, fucking wasteful? He has to encourage this shit, Pavlovian style. Ask and ye shall receive, and so on. He realizes he's laughing silently, shoulders shaking, and Karkat's expression is sliding out of speculative and into second guessing. Dave lifts his chin and shimmies forward and presses their lips back together before either of them can say anything and ruin the moment. Karkat melts back against him, mouth opening eagerly. His tongue has this bizarre texture, not exactly rough but not _human_ , either, and Dave is just as into that as he is with all their other differences -- which is to say, _super_ fucking into it.

"Man," he gasps, some incoherent passage of time later, "Okay, you win, but we have _got_ to do something about this fucking blanket." He lifts himself up on his hands and knees. Karkat makes absolutely no move to remedy the situation, so Dave leans in and kisses the side of his face, then nips at him with his useless blunt human teeth. Karkat emits a single, reproachful grunt. Dave sticks his tongue in Karkat's delicate pointed alien elf ear. Karkat jerks away from him with a startled gasp, and then smacks the back of his head. 

"Jackass," he says. 

"Blanket," Dave reiterates, sitting up and spreading his hands. "I'm not gonna dry hump your ass through three layers of bullshit, no matter whose birthday it is."

A grin steals across Karkat's face before he can catch and smother it. "Like you've never previously done that exact thing," Karkat shoots back, but he's wiggling pleasantly now, working the blanket loose, and Dave scoots back onto his legs to give him more room. 

"Okay, but that was before." 

"Before," Karkat repeats, peeling the blanket off. Dave grabs one corner of it to help this process along. 

"You know, before. Before other things were a thing." 

"Your eloquence is, as ever, astounding." Karkat kicks the blanket the rest of the way off, narrowly missing kicking Dave, too. He's wearing his nightshirt and his boxers, both of which are totally boring monochromatic shades of respective black and grey, and Dave immediately leans in, knees on either side of Karkat's hips, and slides his hands up under his shirt. 

"Under clothes sorts of things," Dave clarifies, unnecessarily. Karkat scoffs at him, but immediately ruins the effectiveness of his own grandstanding by leaning eagerly up into Dave's touch. 

"Your maturity, too. What a reliable and constant source of wonder."

"Hell yeah," Dave agrees, scooting Karkat's shirt up, exposing a vast expanse of irresistible alien anatomy. He runs his thumbs over the grey skin there and feels the overlapping insect-like plates just beneath shiver and ripple. Karkat's breathing noticably quickens, and Dave slips his fingers up his sides, pushing his shirt up as he goes. He leans down and presses a kiss right in the center of his chest, lingering there to feel the telltale flutter of his heartbeat against his lips. Karkat reaches down and pushes his fingers through Dave's hair. He does that a lot. Dave teases him about it, sometimes. Not all the time, and not right now, because when he teases him about it he stops doing it, and Dave actually fucking loves it and all gestures of easy affection, so hey. "Take this off," Dave suggests, snapping the rumpled hem of his shirt.

"Take it off yourself," Karkat says, which -- okay. Dave laughs and ducks his head to hide how red his face probably is, pushing Karkat's hands away. 

"Lift up," Dave says, and Karkat at least does that much, letting him yank his shirt up and off. Dave tosses it aside, takes a second to enjoy the new view, shrugs and pulls of his own shirt, throwing it off to join the pile. The way Karkat's eyes widen when he does this is frankly fucking awesome, and he manages a suggestive smirk before he can't resist anymore and he dips down to drag his lips and tongue over his unfairly attractive boyfriend's newly exposed parts. Mostly the joint between his shoulder and neck, because when he gets in there Karkat makes some _nice_ fuckin' noises, and also wiggles himself more insistently against him. 

"Dave," Karkat sighs, really settling into it, now, melting back against the pillows in this way that suggests what Dave already knows -- he doesn't intend to do any actual work here whatsoever. An embarrassing throaty sort of chuckle bubbles up and out of him against his better judgement. Karkat blinks at him, but can't quite manage the energy to really glare. Dave pulls up and lifts himself onto his elbows, folding his hands over Karkat's chest. 

"I guess it would be pretty pointless to ask what you're after," he says. 

"And yet, here's the question, conspicuously asked!" 

Dave kisses him, pushing down his chest for the required leverage. Karkat rolls his eyes. "We're gonna be real fucking late," Dave reminds him. 

"In my best case scenarios, which I am quickly realizing are based purely in fantasy with no grounding whatsoever in awkward, hellish reality, you somehow manage to make this very much worth whatever retribution we face from our friends for that." 

"Nope," Dave says. "Nothing is worth it. It's gonna be the Crocker-Egbert prankster power hour on loop all night. You're giving them extra time to plan it all out, you know that? Shit. You damn sorry fool." 

"Dave," Karkat says, very patiently. "If you aren't into this, just say so." 

Dave sits up. 

"Oh, no," he says. "Now you've insulted me, Karkat. Insinuated that there is any possible way that in this situation I could be anything other than one thousand percent totally into it. Unforgivable." 

"You _say_ that, but..." Karkat trails off, and his eyes noticeably wander away from Dave's face, down his chest. Dave slides his thumbs into Karkat's waistband, and Karkat snaps his gaze back to his face, cheeks darkening. 

"But nothing," Dave says. "Just don't say I didn't warn you." 

"Please stop talking about people who aren't here and have nothing to do with what is happening, at least theoretically, in this block." Karkat's cheeks have this definite cherry tinge to them, now. Dave pulls Karkat's staid, sensible grey boxer shorts down over his hips, and privately fucking delights in the way he opens his legs immediately, eagerly, inviting. His own dick twinges definitively in his pants, taking interest in the proceedings at last. 

Dave moves so that he can sling Karkat's legs over his shoulders. He kisses his abdomen, right above the narrow path that leads straight to xeno junk town, population one wet, wriggly, candy red bulge... eventually. Right now there's nothing but a pinkish-red seam and a set of comically smooth and slightly swollen fun globes that desperately need attention. Dave starts there, pressing his tongue against one, sliding along the curve of it between them, and then on to the other and back again. Karkat makes a gratifying sound, this hitched-breath sounding half strangled gasp, so Dave takes one into his mouth and sucks lightly, alternating his attentions. 

He fully intends to just get Karkat off with his mouth. He can make _himself_ hard just thinking about it, the texture, the taste, the feel of him moving against his tongue, but Karkat only gives him a couple minutes to settle into the idea before snapping him right out of it. 

"Dave," he says, and not in that insanely sexy begging way, either. This is more urgent, purposeful. Dave flattens his tongue lazily over the closed seam of Karkat's nook, back to front. Karkat's legs twitch, Dave hears him suck in a breath, and then he says again, " _Dave._ " Dave lifts his chin. 

"Karkat?" 

"That's -- I mean, that's, you're good, that's always good, but, I." Karkat stops. Swallows. Dave blinks, slowly. "That isn't what I _want._ " 

"Oh." Dave licks his lips, again. It takes all his willpower to sit up, but he does. His face is hot. Shit. "I thought..."

Karkat covers his face. He's laughing, Dave realizes, which simultaneously makes him feel both better and worse. Better, because at least this isn't like -- serious? And worse, because, come on, everyone has a fucking ego, especially when they're naked and horny and trying to do something nice for their boyfriend on his birthday. 

"I want your _bulge,_ " Karkat clarifies, muffled through his fingers. Dave's face goes, if possible, even hotter. Fucking -- _duh._ Obviously, Strider, Jesus Christ. This is his birthday, not yours. _Shit._ His boner teeters on a precipice between rallying at how hot hearing Karkat say that out loud was versus succumbing to the most unsexy emotion of all: embarrassment. Karkat drops his hands, and his eyebrows are up, he's smiling. Maybe a little sheepishly, but smiling. Dave coughs. 

"I, uh," he says, putting more of that famous Strider eloquence on display. Karkat's eyebrows climb higher. Fuck, he's hot. "Right," he says. "One human bulge, coming right up." Shit. That was not sexy. Karkat visibly winces. Dave drops his eyes and fusses with his own boxers, mostly to distract himself. He has no idea why doing this particular thing makes him so fucking nervous. They've done it before, they've done that and more, but there's just this -- pressure to perform, maybe, and ... 

"Hey," Karkat says, softly. Dave looks up. Karkat sits up. He pulls his legs back under him and shimmies forward so they're facing each other on their knees, and Dave lets his hands drop. Karkat puts his hands on Dave's shoulders, leans in, and kisses him, long and sweet. Then he leans in to whisper in his ear. "Let me do this," Karkat rasps, softly, and it's the sensation of it, the low, gravely _texture_ of it more than the words themselves that get him going, again. He nods, eagerly. Karkat slides his hands into Dave's boxers, one sliding around to squeeze his ass, the other circling his dick in a tight, firm grip. Dave puts his hands on Karkat's shoulders, steadying himself while Karkat strokes him. Heat blossoms through him from that contact upward; his dick goes from struggling half-mast to full and eager attention in no time at all. He leans forward heavily and makes an embarrassing, affirming sound, and Karkat honest to god purrs in his ear. 

This and their quickening breaths are the only sound for awhile, apart from the rhythmic, fleshy sound of Karkat's attention to detail in his shorts. "Do you want to?" Karkat asks, finally, some length of time later -- Dave isn't really sure. His eyes are half lidded, his arms around Karkat, his chin on his shoulder. He smiles into the skin, there. 

"Fuck yeah I do," he mumbles. "Shit. I want to fuck you so bad." He straightens up, pulls his arms back. Karkat's hand stills on him, his grip loosens, and he just holds him down there and pins him with this squinting, inquisitive gaze. Dave yanks his boxers down to bunch around his knees, then puts his hands back on Karkat's shoulders and pushes. Karkat lets himself fall back, reorienting his legs as he goes, and Dave crawls over him, kicking his boxers off down past the foot of the bed. Dave stretches one arm past Karkat and yanks open a drawer he can barely reach, rummaging around until he finds the bottle he's looking for. Karkat laughs. 

"You think that's necessary?" he teases. "I think if you'd hurry up and touch me, you might be surprised." Dave knows exactly what he's talking about. His dick twitches. Fuck, he loves Karkat's weird fucking alien junk. 

"Listen," Dave says, unscrewing the cap. "If I have to deal with getting my butt lubed every time, so do you." 

"I'm not contesting the need," Karkat says, lifting his hips even as he protests. "Just, the _source..._ ah."

" _Ah,_ " Dave repeats, teasing him. Karkat's ass is the one part of his saucier anatomic parts that really resembles the human version one for one. His lubed up fingers slide in easy, one, two... fuck. He slides them in, out, mimicking the things his dick is hopefully gonna be doing like a champion. "You like that?" He lets himself look, really look at what's going on down there. Karkat has his legs spread wide, and true to his word, his nook is dribbling pinkish-red slurry. Dave runs the fingers of his free hand lightly over the seam, pressing over it and then _in_ , while the two fingers he has in Karkat's ass thrust in and out of him. Karkat sucks in a deep breath and nods, hips squirming. 

" _Yes_ ," he hisses, and his eyes go from half-lidded to fully closed. "Yes, yes, touch me, Dave, _yes._ " Dave slides a third finger in behind, and up front, his fingertips run along the ridged underside of Karkat's shivering bulge, coaxing. It doesn't take much; there's a very tactile clench around his fingers, Karkat lets out a long, loud, wordless moan, and his bulge writhes its way out of his nook, dripping candy red slurry. 

"Oh, shit," Dave hears himself say, breathless. He's as hard as he can possibly be, and Karkat is more than ready for him. He slathers the lube on himself -- Karkat makes this desperate mewling protest sound when he withdraws his fingers -- and drops the bottle, hands shaking. Shit. "You're so fucking hot, Karkat," he says, positioning himself with one hand, pushing one of Karkat's legs back with the other. Karkat spreads himself wider, blinking down at him, breathing hard. His bulge writhes up against his abdomen, untended. 

"Shut up," Karkat pants. He sits up on his elbows, looking down -- he always likes to look. Like he can see anything past the spectacle of his own undulating xeno dick. Dave patiently reminds himself that if he laughs at Karkat right now he is going to die a very just and deserved death, and then he presses into him and not laughing becomes very easy because coherent thought drifts away in a flood of tight, hot pressure around his dick. Karkat curls up further, making noises that are half parsable moaning sounds and half alien cricket sounds, and goes tense enough that it's actually kind of hard to keep going. 

"Dude," Dave chokes out. "You gotta relax, man, I don't ..." 

"Sorry," Karkat breathes. Dave can feel him relax, some, and he takes the opportunity to bury himself in him completely, like, literally balls deep, and fuck, don't fucking _laugh._ He bites his tongue. Karkat makes a few more sexy alien sounds, and then drops back heavily against the pillows, panting. "Fuck _yes,_ " he rasps out. Dave slips his hands under his ass, lifting him up, and pulls his hips back. _Fuck yes,_ indeed. It's not that he doesn't like fucking Karkat. He definitely, _definitely_ does. He just -- feels like maybe it's not what he's _best_ at, and if he lets himself think about that he'll lose his boner, so fuck, don't fucking think about that. 

He looks at Karkat. His face, drawn up tight with pleasure. Okay. Good. His bulge is writhing between them in unfettered rhythm, and _that_ definitely gets him going. He wishes he could somehow contort himself so that he could fuck Karkat _and_ suck his bulge at the same time. Shit. A jolt goes through him just thinking about it. He decides to do the next best thing. He thrusts in again -- it's easier, this time, with Karkat lying back and open beneath him -- and simultaneously he draws one hand over Karkat's bulge, squeezing the slick surface from base to tip. Karkat's eyes pop open. He makes an enthusiastic sound, and -- _fuck yes do that again, please, please please touch me, fuck me, touch me --_ practically begs him to keep at it. 

He falls into a rhythm. Pull out, squeeze, push in, slide, squeeze, pull out, and Karkat moves with him, eagerly, melting into a puddle of frenzied alien sounds and inventive oaths. Dave realizes with alarm that this pleasurable assault on his senses is catching up to him quick, but just as he's about to groan a warning, Karkat's back arches up, he slaps one hand over his mouth and scrabbles up a handful of the bedsheet with the other, squeezing tightly and gasping out a bunch of filthy expletives and, Dave thinks, his name. Karkat's bulge writhes in Dave's grip, slurry sheeting out of its exposed surface in warm, pungent waves. 

A few more thrusts is all it takes for Dave to join him, gasping out his pleasure, which expresses itself much less impressively overall. But, _fuck_ , it feels amazing. He slumps forward, sweaty and shaking, heart pounding in his throat. Karkat is laying back, wearing this honestly pretty fucking dopey grin, eyes closed but eyelids fluttering. "God," Karkat says. 

"That's you, actually," Dave reminds him, climbing over his body and letting himself collapse on top of him. His cheek squishes against Karkat's shoulder. "This is for you." He holds up his hand, still covered in Karkat's slurry. Karkat opens his eyes, sees this, and his cheeks go just about as red as Dave's ever seen them. 

"Christ, wipe yourself off, nimrod, you're disgusting." He always gets like this after sex, like he's newly shocked at how messy it is afterward, every time. Dave grins. 

"If you're not gonna, I am," he says. 

" _Don't_ ," Karkat says, so Dave stops dangling his hand over by Karkat's face and draws it up close to his own face, instead. Karkat makes a little strangled sound, and Dave sets about cleaning off his fingers with his tongue, slowly and thoroughly, eyes flickering up to meet Karkat's as he does so. "God damn it," Karkat breathes, but his breathing is uneven, again, and he hasn't stopped looking. Dave sucks his fingers clean, and then waggles them over Karkat's face. 

"Missing out," he says. 

"God damn _you,_ " Karkat amends his previous statement, and then he slaps Dave's hand out of his face, rolls them over in one shockingly powerful motion, and kisses him, deeply. 

Time evaporates, for awhile. 

Eventually, they're laying side by side again, and the sky beyond the window is black as pitch and studded with a billion newborn stars. 

"We are _extremely_ fucking late," Dave points out, cheerfully, and Karkat's hand finds his and squeezes. 

"They can wait," he says. 

"Pretty rude of us, though." 

Karkat snorts. "Fuck _that_ ," he says. "It's _my_ god damn birthday, and I can spend it however I damn well want." 

"Amen," Dave sighs. "Also, you said _birthday_ , humans win." 

"Fuck you," Karkat says, but Dave can't possibly miss the way he smiles, the way he squeezes his hand again. Birthdays better than wriggling days, confirmed. Boom. He snuggles in closer. 

"Love you too," he says, offhand and flippant like it's a joke, but Karkat's eyes flutter open and find his and Dave knows he knows _exactly_ what he means. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr [@landofsomethingsomething](http://landofsomethingsomething.tumblr.com)!


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